An apparatus for the assembling of individual packages into groups and for enclosing the grouped packages in a receptacle or box is taught, for example, in DE-OS 3 301 013.
That apparatus is especially designed for cup-shaped articles which can contain foodstuffs or the like. The articles to be packaged are delivered by a transport unit having a feed belt and can have a table containing a grouping chamber which is adjustable in height to allow the objects to be collected in groups which can, for packaging, be stacked on one another.
The transport device has a movable fork which has tines which engage groups of the individual containers to stack them.
In this case, the first group is deposited upon the table and successive groups are deposited upon the previously positioned groups on the table.
The stack which passes from the grouping chamber is introduced into an intermediate chamber in which a casing is applied to the stack which retains the integrity of the stack until it is subsequently wrapped with the final packaging material forming a box, carton or other receptacle around the stack of containers.
This earlier apparatus is expensive since the transport of the grouped articles from the incoming conveyor requires a height-adjustable fork which additionally must be provided with a slide displaceable in the horizontal direction. The back and forth movement of this slide and the fork requires comparatively considerable time for the transfer of the articles from the incoming conveyor belt to the raisable and lowerable table. As a result, a packaging machine of this type cannot operate with very high rates of cycling.
It is significant that the grouped containers must be additionally stored in intermediate chambers, for example, and depending upon the cycling rates, additionally horizontal movable shifters may be required for the intermediate storage.
The stack must be retained by the aforementioned casing which must be dimensioned to take up the entire collection of articles to be retained in the receptacle. Only after these steps are the collections of articles deposited on respective receptacle blanks and after the collected containers are deposited from the casing, the side walls of the receptacles are erected. The packaging material must usually be transported into a further pressing station for gluing of the parts of the receptacle to enable the package to be closed.
This system, therefore, requires a comparatively large number of stations and at least in some of these stations, the articles or containers to be packaged may be free to move about, to tilt or to otherwise become dislocated so that the elements of the apparatus cooperating with the grouped articles may not be able reliably to engage or manipulate them.
Indeed, it has been found to be the case when the articles are prepackaged foodstuffs, like butter, margarine or the like, that the individual containers may be damaged in handling.
Reference may also be had to DE 36 39 982 which discloses a device for the packaging of grouped individual objects in a box or other receptacle formed about the grouped containers and including a feed and collecting device for assembling the individual containers, a feed, fold and hold-down device for packaging material blanks, especially cardboard box blanks, and the formation of the box around the stacked containers as well as a discharge device for the full receptacle.
The feed device in this case extends into the region of a rotary unit having a vertical axis and referred to as an indexing device.
The system depends upon engagement of the packaging materials from above and likewise is not fully reliable.